Gaseous effluent streams from the manufacturing of electronic materials, devices, products, solar cells and memory articles (hereinafter “electronic devices”) may involve a wide variety of chemical compounds, organic compounds, oxidizers, breakdown products of photo-resist and other reagents, as well as other gases and suspended particulates that may be desirably removed from the effluent streams before the effluent streams are vented from a process facility into the atmosphere.
Effluent streams to be abated may include species generated by an electronic device manufacturing process and/or species that were delivered to the electronic device manufacturing process and which passed through the process chamber without chemical alteration. As used herein, the term “electronic manufacturing process” is intended to be broadly construed to include any and all processing and unit operations in the manufacture of electronic devices and/or LCD products, as well as all operations involving treatment or processing of materials used in or produced by an electronic device and/or LCD manufacturing facility, as well as all operations carried out in connection with the electronic device and/or LCD manufacturing facility not involving active manufacturing (examples include conditioning of process equipment, purging of chemical delivery lines in preparation of operation, etch cleaning of process tool chambers, abatement of toxic or hazardous gases from effluents produced by the electronic device and/or LCD manufacturing facility, etc.). As used herein, “effluent streams” and “waste streams” are intended to be synonymous terms.
Thermal reactors have increasingly been installed as point-of-use abatement systems to process effluent waste streams to decompose toxic materials, converting them to less toxic forms. For example, thermal abatement reactors may abate waste effluent components including, but not limited to, CF4, C2F6, SF6, C3F8, C4F8, C4F8O, SiF4, BF3, BH3, B2H6, B5H9, NH3, PH3, SiH4, SeH2, Cl2, HCl, HF, HBr, WF6, H2, Al(CH3)3, alcohols, oxidizers such as O3, NF3, and ClF3, F2 primary and secondary amines, acid gases, organosilanes, organometallics, and halosilanes.
As the use of thermal abatement increases, so has the necessity for developing safety, reliability, monitoring and control features for thermal reactors. Safety features are especially important, because the abatement of effluent waste streams in thermal reactors may be facilitated by the introduction of fuels, e.g., methane, natural gas and/or hydrogen, to the thermal reactors for combustion and oxidation therein.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide methods and apparatus to increase the safety and reliability of thermal abatement reactors.